


Polluted Waters

by devilinthedetails



Series: A Hundred Drabbles [13]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Economics, Environmental Desctruction, Environmental Devastation, Gen, Master and Apprentice, Pollution - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:42:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25921501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Qui-Gon and Dooku gaze out over polluted waters.
Series: A Hundred Drabbles [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1880980
Kudos: 4





	Polluted Waters

Famed Forges

The industrial world of Chingtai was famed for its factories and forges that churned out valuable metal and goods made from that metal. Day and night, the factories belched black smoke into the sky. The smoke stained the walls of the world’s skytowers.

Residents relied on filters installed into the viewports of their conapts to remove the toxins from the air before they could breathe it. In the streets, people walked through the thick, oppressive smog in masks meant to shield wearers from the harmful health effects of pollution that could chop ten or twenty years of a life expectancy.

River Wraiths

Qui-Gon felt tears form in his eyes. He stared at the rivers that wound through the sprawling cities of Chingtai. The once blue waters now ran black and slick as an oil spill. In the hazy smog perpetually hanging over the polluted rivers, Qui-Gon thought he saw wraiths dancing. Wraiths from a long gone era lost to memory. Wraiths from a time when children could wade in the water without worry of contamination. Wraiths of fish swimming before the banks were lined with their rotting corpses. Wraiths that haunted Qui-Gon as ghosts of everything Chingtai had lost. 

Monument to Sentient Greed

“Do you know why this happened?” Dooku asked from beneath his mask, words and expression muffled by the fabric. Qui-Gon reflected that was another thing Chingtai had lost in its blind pursuit of profits: voice and expression.

Qui-Gon stared out at a river choked by industrial sludge, standing on an arched bridge in what purported to be a city park. Qui-Gon wasn’t certain what purpose a city park had on a planet that had destroyed all its natural beauty unless it was to be a monument to the sentient greed that had ruined this once beautiful world. 

Bitter Undoing

“Greed, Master.” Qui-Gon’s answer was choked as the river below him. “The putting of profits and productivity above all life that has unquantifiable value.”

The Force wept for this place and everything that had undone its pristine nature. Qui-Gon could feel its grief in his own spirit, connecting his sorrow to its own.

“Ambition did this,” his Master corrected, and gazing out at the pitiful city park surrounding him, Qui-Gon wondered if there was any difference between greed and ambition. Both seemed to cause bitter undoings like the pollution of Chingtai. “The desire to make Chingtai prosper.”

Precious Profits

Chingtai had prospered. Every year, to the tune of trillions of credits, it exchanged the valuable metals and products it created with a greedy galaxy that could never consume enough of its exports. The people of Chingtai weren’t hungry, but they couldn’t eat fish from the rivers. Nor could they watch their children swim and wade in clean waters.

They had their precious profits—or at least the wealthy industrialists who had built the factories and the forges—did. The blue rivers and the clear, crisp air had not been precious on Chingtai, and so they had not been preserved.


End file.
